ORLANDO, FL (SatireWire.com) — The state of Florida will be closed for mental repairs until further notice, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

Thanks to Florida's crumbling mental infrastructure, people who dress as mice and princesses at Disney World are the state's most normal residents.

For decades, Florida’s crumbling mental infrastructure has been well documented, from the recent legal shootings of unarmed teenagers and the acquittal of Casey Anthony to men who store dead cougars in their freezers and the occasional severed leg that washes ashore.

According to NIH Director Francis S. Collins, the long-overdue renovations will focus on rebuilding Floridian’s ability to live with each other, exhibit socially acceptable behavior, and, at the very least, encourage its citizens not to shoot their grandmothers with crossbows quite so much.

“Right now the most ‘normal’ people in Florida are the ones at Disney World who dress up like mice and princesses,” said Collins. “When the refurbish is done, however, we hope that painting your nose to look like a gun and stealing video games from a 7-Eleven because you wanted to buy a birthday gift for your pet python will not be considered mainstream behavior.”

To save money, the NIH initially planned to tear the state down and start over, but compromised with Florida legislators who opposed any remodeling.

“The people of Florida are not defective, unstable structures that threaten public safety,” said Democratic State Rep. Skiles Boonley, who wore a pink button with the word ‘UTERUS’ on it because it annoyed his Republican colleagues. “Well, OK, some of them are. But that’s legal here.”

Republican State Sen.Ellyn Bogdanoff, who recently sponsored a bill allowing state residents to dye animals any color they choose, concurred: “The people of this state want what anybody else wants: burnt umber poodles and fuchsia cows,” she said. “We don’t need repairing. What we need is a law requiring water fowl to accessorize.”

In the end, the NIH settled on the more costly psychiatric renovations. Out-of-state contractors will be used to do most of the work – by phone or video chat if possible – due to the threat of “going native.”

Only a third of Florida residents are native-born, but outsiders are not immune to decay. The heat, humidity, and wear-and-tear of daily Florida life can cause newcomers to mentally decompose at an alarming rate.

“When I moved in from Ohio 10 years ago, I was normal,” said Rich Dulay, a 35-year-old accountant in Vero Beach. “In other words, I was the not-odd-man out in my neighborhood. So one day I put on a bikini, covered my feet in chicken feathers, and trashed a local Burger King because my fries were different lengths. Now I’m just one of the guys.”

During mental repairs, Florida will be closed to all traffic. No one may enter or leave without a signed note from their doctor or an escaped orangutan selling cocaine from a wheelchair.